Verizon Wireless reports fourth quarter 2008 earnings

Bucking the downward trend, Verizon Wireless announced strong Q4 2008 earnings yesterday amidst the downturn. Verizon Wireless saw a net increase of 1.4 million non-acquisition related customers in Q4 2008, most of which were in the retail sector. Verizon added a total of 5.8 million new subscribers in 2008, a 9.9% increase which brings its total subscriber base to 72.1 million. These figures do not include customers added with the Alltel acquisition. Verizon also had a low churn rate with 1.35% churn amongst all customers and 1.05% amongst retail postpaid customers. Verizon saw double digit percentage increases in revenue with a total revenue of $12.8 billion in Q4 2008 and $49.3 billion over the year, a 12.3% and 12.4% increase respectively. With 65% of retail customers rocking 3G enabled devices, data revenues reached $10.7 billion for the year, a 44% increase over 2007. All in all a solid performance from Verizon Wireless.

Good job VERIZON! I’m with at&t, and the coverage sucks. If Verizon was GSM, I would’ve switched over in a heartbeat.

JustMe

Way to be VZW! Maybe now they can afford to give me a raise.. lol

kyle

i also wish they were gsm, there phones all suck…

Chris Meyers

Now THIS is a solidly performing company. They did what AT&T didn’t do. Increased YOY Q4 earnings in a dismal economy. A bright light in the dim economy.

Duder

Goes to show that as long as you have memorable ads your phones can be outdated and your service can be overpriced.

jawsnj

Maybe now they can launch an update to may aging curve. Can you hear me now…I want a cdma Bold…no curve update a real top of the line world phone bold…

Bgr any dates upcoming???

Chris Meyers

My god their churn numbers are stunning. Anybody else notice that? Solid network, low churn, solid customer service, outstanding earnings, fully built out 3G network. I don’t have Verizon, but this is a well run company.

Jim

Their service is great; you can pretty much get a connection anywhere in the continental United States. It just sucks that all their available phones seem to be a generation behind everyone else’s.

If you’re shopping for a basic flip phone with great coverage, go with Verizon. If you want a smartphone with wifi, go with one of the other carriers.

backbeat

^Need a tissue? ;)

Joe

It’s hard where I live as an AT&T retailer and it is so obnoxious hearing the whole Verizon speal from everybody about how it’s soooo great… Where I live everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY has Verizon because they all think that it is all that works. I took an AT&T phone and a Verizon phone with me on an hour drive and AT&T had equal to or better service about 95% of the way. Many areas Verizon had 1 bar and AT&T had 4. Plus as a current Verizon customer (only because I’m still in contract and I refuse to pay them a termination fee) I know for a fact that Verizon’s data coverage is terrible and unreliable… I don’t know why people insist that they must pay more for less service and crappier phones. God I hate Verizon.

Joe

@ Jim, I believe Verizon doesn’t even allow their phones to have wi-fi, and their excuse is “we’re Verizon and we’re the best so you don’t need it, so we’ll just rape you with charges to use our crappy data network”… and if your phone does happen to have any good features they freakin block it and make you pay extra for a ton of extra crap to do what the phone should do right out of the box.

Joe

@ Chris Meyers, they make a lot of extra $$ because they are shady and overcharge for everything, phones, service and accessories. Plus some of their shady moves make them extra as well. My boss had 3 lines that had been out of contract for 4+ months. She switched and they charged her like $900 in termination fees, then the month after the termination fee had jumped to almost $2000. All that for cancelling lines that were long out of contract?! That’s no way to do business…

Plus a host of solid “dumbphones”, to satisfy any taste. People bitching have prolly never even been a verizon store. ATTs phones aren’t much better, you just have the ability to use unlocked devices–which is a nice bonus

notHTCkid

They have 5 phones with wifi…so there goes that argument.

in a down economy Verizon hired more people, they had better profits, they built more stores, and they bought alltel without ANY goverment handouts, and they are going strong with 80 million customers.

this year you will see exciting new handsets(8900, new motorola slider qwerty, the versa handset, new PTT devices, and 3 new worldphone smartphones, and the flip pearl).

They bought coast to coast gapless LTE coverage to be rolled out within a year in test markets.

I have my storm BT tethered to my Mac, surfing the web, anyplace I want to be surfing it without having to be at home for highspeed internet. Wifi is for poor people, who wants to run around looking for internet when you cna just get on highspeed network while walking down the street. i don’t have time in my life to stop, find a hotspot, and surf…sure it’s a cool toy, but I can’t tell you the last time I used the Wifi connection on my LAPTOP even.

I will take gapless 12mb download speed with LTE VS outdated wifi

cutting edge is not having a technology from the 90’s, cuttig edge is not having to rely on somebody else to get online, cutting edge is having gapless network, cutting edge is spending 9 billion dollars on that spectrum so that you can get online anyplace at anytime.

but hey, keep that wifi signal, better run across the street to grab that unsecured one in that apartment complex to send a fil….while I send it while moving forward with my life instead of relying on somebody else to do so.

Scott

Not surprising, they are a very well run company for sure, but maybe now they can afford to lower their freakin prices a little? Between my wife and I we pay $450/month for service (voice & data on PDA’s + text and we both have data cards for our laptops). We’re getting freakin RAPED. They REALLY need a “business user” package that encompasses all those services for like $150/month…If they did that they would take even more market share away from companies using Tmobile or Sprint due to the lower prices.

As for those saying their service sucks, to address the customer portion of that, Verizon is AMAZING when it comes to making sure a customer is happy, but NOT when it comes to the latest devices (there I would agree every day of the week they suck ass). In terms of the product service signal etc. The guy who mentioned having VZW and AT&T on a hour drive, first off you have to give BOTH a bit more of a test drive than that. Second though I HAVE given AT&T, Tmobile & Sprint a try for weeks on each network (sick of getting screwed on the latest hardware, but the service always brings me back) and most carriers had good signal coverage everywhere, some even better than VZW in some areas but the DROPPED CALLS is where VZW shines…Between my wife and I we *might* have 5-6 dropped calls in a month and I’m being liberal with that number (I can’t remember the last time I had one drop) and we use our phones for about 3,000 minutes a month each…On Sprint and AT&T (the last two most recent carriers we tried) we would experience that many dropped calls in a SINGLE DAY. That’s where VZW shines, STABLE calls.

But with that said, I do as well wish they were GSM because there is one thing I notice about AT&T vs. Verizon, AT&T call CLARITY is absolutely stunning; it’s like your in the room with the caller, just perfect…too bad you’re always in danger of that perfect sounding call dropping. Grrr…

There is no perfect carrier and thought I hate to love VZW cause their prices and hardware stink, no matter how tempting other providers hardware and prices are every time I try those other services/devices I ALWAYS end up coming back to VZW…I hate it, but it is what it is.

Jim

Whew! Take it easy, brother. What are you, the CEO?

My contract just ended last week with Verizon; I figure I’ll wait and pay month to month until the Palm Pre comes out in a couple months. Unless Verizon comes out with something cooler in the meantime. I played around with a Storm and an Omnia at a Verizon Costco kiosk; I wasn’t impressed. The navigation and UI were terrible.

Sorry, I agree VZW is definetely the best carrier out there but with regards to the phones, they suck…pure and simple…I’m a new hardware, tech geek fanatic, always have to have the latest greatest etc (well, latest and greatest that WORKS WELL for me and my business which limits what I can select from, only front facing qwerty’s, but…) and I’m constantly DROOLING over what other networks are offering (mainly Sprint at the moment with the 800w and soon to be released Treo Pro) and yet on Verizon, what are my choices? A 4+ year old 700wx, 2+ year old 755p or the crappy stupid little “I want to be a real treo but ain’t” centro…Some selection. The Q you say? Yea, I need the battery on my phone to be able to surive past 9am…Saga? Tried it; completely unreliable, battery life stunk, and the optical mouse needed to go.

Just sayin’ – for me, VZW phones DO SUCK. Get the latest Treo’s (jesus, at least one of them!) and I’d be happy…but nooooo!!!

theguy

@ joe… are you just pulling all of this out of your ass? verizon has great data and voice coverage, maybe not where you live but in the majority of the country.

Joe

@ Scott, in actuallicty Sprint is pretty much the ideal carrier as far as what you get for your money… They roam off the Verizon network for free (so you pay for Sprint coverage and get Verizon coverage for free, not bad at all) nights start at 7 with the option to have them start at 6 for $5. Plus unlimited everything is only $99, where with AT&T and Verizon it’s $99 for only unlimited talk, then it’s extra for unlimited text, and extra again for data. And as far as phones go, it may not be absolutly top of the line but I do really like the Instinct, and what you get with the phone in the box is a steal!! 2 batteries, a charger for the extra battery, a case, headphones, a data cable… fully loaded!!!

Joe

@ theguy, no ass-pullin here son. I stated in my comment that I work in the wireless retail business. :-)

Scott

Joe, I thought the same thing last time I tried Sprint, “coverage couldn’t be that bad since it roams on Verizon”…Problem is it doesn’t roam on Verizon until it’s completely out of a Sprint coverage area, thus until then it’s all Sprint towers. I could easily deal with a dropped call here and there but as I mentioned with VZW maybe 5-6/month at MOST using 3,000+ minutes and with Sprint we were getting 5-6 dropped calls every day; in our business we just can’t have our phones dropping calls regularly.

I’m SOOOOO TEMPTED to get the Pro though and give it another go but I just can’t imagine that the dropped calls were entirely the 800w’s problem and not Sprint’s network…

StevenGlansburg

What about the Storm? The worlds first touch screen blackberry on Americas most reliable network????Omg!!!!!!!!!

jawsnj

See VZ can still make money in this climate, maybe they were not so dumb to pass on the ijoke…

Keep grinding out that living Kanish…nobel work for the rent money…

Justin

I’ve always been a firm believer in the fact that people get service with the company that works well where they live. So for all these people that say that one carrier is better then another that might just be the case where you live(or spend most of your time) but its not the case everywhere.

backbeat

@Scott: Why would you bother drooling over a discontinued product [800w] or a product with that lusty, sexy 0.1 OS update [Pro]? Waste of spit if you ask me.